


How Good It Can Be

by rilla



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4512081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The OC au. A headcanon that got out of control. Zayn is Ryan and Harry is Marissa (except arguably less awful).</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Good It Can Be

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little all over the place - it's a headcanon in response to a tumblr meme prompt from [samebutharold](http://samebutharold.tumblr.com) about Zarry/The OC and it ended up being too long for my terrible laptop to allow me to post over there. So much fluff and ridiculousness.

Zayn’s life is split into two halves. Most people incorrectly assume it hinges on the moment he met Geoff Payne, or maybe even the day his parents split up, or the first time he got arrested, but in Zayn’s head, his life is split into Before Harry Styles and After Harry Styles. It was strange when he spent a night in a prison cell, and it was stranger when Geoff ended up sighing at him and taking him home for the night, but standing outside the Payne house, smoking that final cigarette, and seeing a silhouette patter down the driveway next door: that was it. That was the moment. Tall, a mess of dark hair gold-edged by the street light, skinny jeans and shining silver boots that probably cost a year of what Zayn earned when he worked at the garage, and a smile that could split the sky open. 

“Hi, stranger,” the boy said, in his low, slow voice, “who are you?” and even now to this day Zayn remembers how easily the words came, even though words are a struggle for him sometimes: “I’m whoever you want me to be.” He remembers the way Harry laughed, sincere and real, head tipped back. He remembers the curve of Harry’s throat and that tug of want in the pit of his stomach. He remembers thinking Harry was the sort of thing he could never have. For a while, Harry managed to change his mind. Zayn knows now that his first impression was right.

*

He meets Liam for the first time in the middle of the night, a scared mouse of a boy halfway up the stairs who says, “Oh, erm – where are you off to?” a little warily, as though Zayn’s about to push him down the stairs and run off with his expensive watch. 

“Wanted a drink,” Zayn mumbles, and then finds himself sitting with Liam at the Paynes’ huge, shining breakfast bar with a mug of tea and a pile of toast in front of him.

Liam says tentatively, “I’ve always thought that stealing cars sounded like quite good fun,” and then frowns deeply and adds “Maybe I’ve been playing too much GTA,” and Zayn realises, suddenly, that he’s going to be good mates with this strange, shy boy.

*

Somehow he’s allowed to live with the Paynes until he finishes sixth form. His mum comes down from Bradford and cries a lot and makes him promise he’ll be better there, that he won’t contact his old friends, that he’ll stay on the right track, and he does, he promises. Part of him believes he can do it. He doesn’t know why Geoff and Karen have put their faith in him but he doesn’t want to mess it up. He thinks it might be something to do with Liam, how friendly they are now, how happy Liam seems for some reason. They’ve gone out together to parties like Niall Horan’s seventeenth at Claridges, everyone their age in uncomfortable suits and drinking champagne underage, Zayn in a suit of Liam’s that’s too tight across the shoulders and too long in the leg. Niall’s one of the most down to earth people he’s met there so far, and Harry’s wandering around, spiking everyone’s drinks with a shiver of rum. He looks into Zayn’s eyes as he tops up his Coke and gives him a secret smile that almost makes Zayn gasp. When he looks sideways he sees Liam’s eyes on Harry’s mate Louis, almost pleading with him for attention as Louis’s gaze slips easily over him and onto someone else. 

“Why do you like him?” Zayn asks Liam later once they’re home and Geoff and Karen are upstairs and the two of them are downstairs in the den on the Playstation, dizzy from champagne, gold running through their veins. “He’s really annoying,” Zayn adds. 

“He’s not,” Liam says with absolute certainty. “He’s funny. He makes me laugh.” 

“He’s mean,” Zayn points out, almost gently, and Liam says, clearly trying not to seem hurt, “I think I’ve been in love with him since I was seven.” 

“Oh,” Zayn says. There’s a pause after that, and then he says, “Harry’s fit,” and Liam relaxes again.

*

He starts year twelve with the others. Louis throws balls of paper at him behind the teacher’s back in English and he goes over history homework with Liam every evening when they get home from school and Niall comes over to sit with them for lunch a couple of days a week and it’s good. It honestly is. People seem to like Zayn, for no reason at all. He gets invited to parties, Leigh Anne’s birthday and the time Louis’s parents and sisters are away. When they get there he’s half drunk already, running over to press beers into their hands, saying “Wicked to see you, Zayn!” and then he squeezes Liam’s bicep and says “Where’ve you been hiding these guns, Plain?” before winking and flitting away again.

Liam goes furiously red and looks like he’s having a coronary. 

Zayn sighs at him. “He called you ‘Plain’,” he says. 

“He almost knows my name,” Liam says, sounding adoring. 

Zayn sighs again. Harry’s there too, on the arm of some guy that no one seems to know, someone older, with broad shoulders and bigger muscles than Liam. Harry’s leaning into him and biting his bottom lip in deep thought and flirting mercilessly and it’s making Zayn’s stomach tighten up, especially when Harry looks over in his direction and smiles, slow and sweet. The older guy leaves an hour later and Harry starts knocking shots back, one after another, and when he disappears a little later Zayn goes to find him and he’s outside, being messily sick into a beautifully curated flowerbed. When he’s done Zayn bundles him into a taxi and gets him home, but he’s too incoherent to produce his keys, so Zayn sneaks him into the Paynes’ house, guides him gently up the stairs, wishing he’d thought to drag Liam home too, hoping against hope that Geoff and Karen don’t wake up to find their car-stealing runaway trundling a drunk Harry Styles up their pristine staircase. Zayn lowers Harry into his bed and Harry lets him do it, blinking his green eyes slowly as he looks up at Zayn. “You’re nice,” he slurs, and Zayn smiles, a little bitter, and says, “Go to sleep.” In the morning, when Harry’s gone, Zayn isn’t particularly surprised.

*

A few weeks later, when Liam’s in the middle of his third football practice and being mercilessly flirted with by Louis, Zayn gets accosted by Harry just outside the school gates. He’s unlocking his bike when someone puts their hands over his eyes. Obviously, his first instinct is to smash down on their foot with his own and elbow them hard in the stomach, so Harry ends up on the ground moaning in pain. “Oh my God,” Zayn says, wondering if he’s about to get arrested for assault and if maybe he should run. 

Eventually Harry manages to ask him to the cinema, and carols over his shoulder as he limps off, “And that’s a date, okay?” And it is. It’s a date. They hold hands and kiss in the back row of the cinema and then Harry takes him home and gives him a blowjob and then they order pizza. Zayn doesn’t really think he’s ever been happier.

*

It’s just. There are problems. Zayn’s always liked a bit of weed here and there but he isn’t really prepared for it when Harry gets out a little bag of coke every so often. He isn’t prepared for dinner with Harry’s parents either. Anne and Robin are nice but Zayn feels tongue-tied and knocks over a pitcher of water and even though they say it’s fine he doesn’t think it is. Their house is fancier than Geoff and Karen’s and there’s so much he could break there with just one false turn. His marks at school are good but that’s all he’s got, that’s who he is, that’s it, that’s everything. He doesn’t have the same hobbies – rugby seems baffling and he’s never been to the theatre and he thinks they might own horses, and horses scare him. He’s never been on a plane and when he tells them he doesn’t own a passport there’s a stunned silence before Anne laughs uncomfortably. Harry kicks him under the table and blows him a kiss but it’s not – it feels different from usual. It’s weird. That’s all. And sometimes Harry doesn’t show up to school or to certain lessons and it’s just stupid. His parents are paying all this money for his education and he just thinks he can coast and that his exam marks don’t actually matter. The sad thing is that he thinks Harry’s exam marks actually don’t matter, that he’ll have enough money no matter what. And Zayn’s happy for him, that’s all well and good, but then Harry will suggest having a gap year or that Zayn could come skiing with them after Christmas. And the gulf between them widens, inch by painful inch.

*

Despite the problems, Harry is lovely. He’s mercurial and ridiculous and funny and sweet and although Zayn’s had sex with boys before it’s different with Harry, with his big gentle hands that can turn sharp and beautiful exactly when Zayn wants them to. He holds onto Zayn with absolute confidence, drinks in his body with thirsty eyes, runs his thumbs over Zayn’s tattoos. His scars, too. “God, you’re gorgeous. God, I love you,” Harry says, breath hot on Zayn’s collarbone, and sometimes Zayn believes him.

*

Things change. Doniya gets pregnant and his mum calls him crying and so he goes home over the Easter holidays because he has to. He doesn’t tell anyone why, because it’s embarrassing. No one gets pregnant by mistake around where the Paynes live. They particularly don’t get pregnant by mistake when they’re eighteen and scared and broke. He’s got a Saturday job at Waitrose so he’s got a bit of money he can give them because they’ve got enough mouths to feed without having to handle another one too. When his dad comes over he’s tight-lipped and disappointed and his parents row and Safaa keeps having tantrums for no reason and Waliyha won’t make eye contact with anyone and Doniya comes into his old room and sits on the foot of his bed and mumbles that the baby’s dad doesn’t want to know and that she’ll be fine, she thinks, she really will. 

He says, “I’m coming home anyway,” the words just falling out of his mouth, “I’m coming home. I don’t want to go to private school any more, it’s shit. I fucking hate being around all them rich people. I want to get a proper job anyway. I’ll help.”

*

Karen becomes the second mother to cry down the phone at him in one weekend. It’s not ideal.

*

It’s actually all fine, because all of the stuff he left behind at Liam’s house, that wasn’t really his anyway. It was bought for him by Karen and Geoff, the new t-shirts, the expensive jeans, the trainers that felt like walking on air. He’s still got his old battered Doc Martens. He’ll be fine.

*

His phone gets nicked the first time he goes out, which means he hasn’t got anyone’s numbers. That’s fine too. It’s oddly freeing. He was starting to get sick of Niall asking him when he was coming home and Louis asking him if he was really serious about staying in Bradford forever and Liam’s sad emojis and Harry’s ‘I miss you. I miss you. I love you’ bullshit. It’s not real. None of it was real. It was just parties with pretend people and pretend things that he never really recognised, lights shining in his eyes and blinding him to reality. It was never really his to begin with. He understands that now.

*

Doniya has the baby. It’s a girl and she calls her Sasha. The first time Zayn holds Sasha he thinks he’s never been more at peace than he is staring into her big brown eyes. That night in bed he lies there listening to Doniya padding around in her room next door and he thinks of his bed at Karen and Geoff’s house, the way Harry would stay too late and wake him up with kisses before dawn so he could sneak out and sneak home. He remembers the feel of Harry against him, so sweet and open, telling silly stories and kissing Zayn’s neck and being interested in every part of his body, biting his ankle bone and inhaling the inside of his wrist. Some day he thinks the memories will come without the pain attached, but on the other hand, he thinks that might be the cost of love.

*

Louis, Liam and Niall show up to rescue him when the baby’s a month old. “We miss you!” Louis shouts at him angrily from the doorstep before Zayn’s mum steps in and firmly invites them all inside for tea. Zayn takes Louis and Niall upstairs to show them Sasha, who’s asleep in her cot, and Niall says politely, “Your house is nice. Very compact, but everything’s here.” “It does the job,” Zayn says, oddly amused. Louis picks up Sasha and kisses the tip of her nose and starts crooning to her ridiculously. “He likes babies,” Niall explains. “He and Liam are going to have a load of them one day,” and Zayn can’t help but smile when Louis makes a hideous face across at them. When they go back downstairs, Zayn’s mum looks over at them from the conversation she’s been having with Liam, and says, face full of hurt, “I’ve just been having a chat with Liam. You know, your time away doesn’t sound as bad as you said it was.”

*

Zayn just about makes it back to Geoff and Karen's for January, so he can pick up year twelve again from there. He feels guilty and terrible and as though his life’s clicking into place again and he might be able to make a success of himself. University graduates get paid more than supermarket workers, he tells himself over and over again as he swallows down the guilt. He can give back more this way. He hopes that one day he'll stop feeling shit about the whole thing. 

“How’s Harry?” he asks Liam vaguely as he’s unpacking and Liam’s staring intently at him from the door as though he’s afraid Zayn’s going to try to leave again.

Liam’s face creases into a frown. “You’ve been gone for a while,” he hedges, and Zayn knows he won’t like whatever it is that Liam has to say.

*

Harry has a new boyfriend. He’s called Chris. He plays polo and he’s distantly related to the royal family. “How nice for him,” Zayn says, and tries to make himself believe it. The first time Zayn meets Chris, he ends up punching him in the face. No one is more surprised than him, because he definitely didn’t think it was on the cards for the evening when Jesy from school announced she wanted to invite some people over to drink their way through her parents’ wine cellar. Except then Chris makes one too many bad jokes about things like immigration and UKIP and Zayn snorts derisively one too many times and Chris ends up starting to square up to him, so Zayn hits him in the face. 

“You know what I like about Conservatives?” he says to Liam later, thinking about how long Doniya’s been on the list for a council flat and his dad’s disability benefits for his bad back getting relentlessly cut.

Liam says “What?”

“Nothing,” Zayn says darkly. “Fucking nothing at all.”

*

“I thought he was nice,” Harry explains later that night. “I’ve never seen him that drunk before.” 

“Mmm,” Zayn says, keeping his distance. They’re sitting in Harry’s front garden, shivering slightly, and although he’d like to huddle up to Harry for warmth it doesn’t seem like a good idea. “It’s nice you’re going out with someone.” 

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Yeah, I suppose so.” He doesn’t sound convinced. 

There’s a moment and then Zayn says, “You know, when someone’s talking like that about poor people, you have to speak up.” Harry starts to make a face and Zayn says firmly, “No, really. I’m a poor person. Do it for me.” 

“You’re not poor,” Harry says. “You’ve got Geoff and Karen.” Zayn narrows his eyes at him, and wonders how to make him see that it’s different for him, but it doesn’t really seem possible. He shrugs instead and leans back on their bench. It’s a cold, clear night, and being next to Harry makes him feel like he can fly. He doesn’t know how that’s still the case after almost a year. 

As if on cue Harry says softly, “I can’t believe you left me,” and puts his head sideways onto Zayn’s shoulder. “I’m such a fuck up without you. I missed you so much,” Harry continues quietly and Zayn puts his arm around Harry’s waist, and doesn’t know what to say.

*

Liam and Louis are obnoxiously happy together. It’s gross and Zayn tells them that as often as possible. Harry dumps Chris, which is good because he was a terrible human being, and the five of them cobble together the sort of friendship they used to have before Zayn went home for almost a year. They all take exams and although Zayn’s a year behind the others now he still likes talking about how freaked out he is and how certain he is that he’s failed, even though he’s certain of nothing of the sort. The others all have their university places sorted out now: Liam’s nearby, Louis is down in Brighton, Niall’s at Bristol and Harry’s – 

“Where the fuck is St Andrews, anyway?” Zayn asks, offhand, and Harry pauses for a second before saying awkwardly “Scotland,” and Zayn says: “Oh.” He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this empty before. He stares at Harry for a moment, wondering how long it takes to get to Scotland. 

“It’s only five hours on the train,” Harry says, with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “My course looks brilliant. I’ll be home for the holidays…”

Later on, when they’re both a bit tipsy and Niall’s gone home with the prettiest barmaid and Liam and Louis have retreated to Louis’s bedroom, Harry looks at him with a bit of a smile and says, almost shy, “You know, we still have one more summer.”

*

It’s the best summer of Zayn’s life. He goes home for a couple of weekends here and there, and Doniya brings the baby down to see him for a few days. He works at the supermarket and goes out at night and allows people to buy him drinks for once, Harry gesturing for bottles of Dom Perignon to be brought to their private table, and although Zayn knows it’s stupid, a terrible waste, he has to admit to himself: sometimes he likes having money. The five of them go to Louis’s family’s house in the South of France for a couple of weeks and lie out in the sun, bronzed and immortal. Liam stands over Zayn and shakes his wet hair so the water drops wake him up and when Zayn looks at him, his happy laughing face in contrast to the unpopular, nervous boy he met two years ago, he can’t be angry. Louis divebombs into the pool and Niall teaches Zayn to do the backstroke and Harry – Harry. Harry is everything. Harry is next to him in the morning, all lazy yawns and smooth brown skin and messy hair. Harry is with him all day, draped over the sunlounger next to him, holding his hand as they wade out to sea, picking out the best tomatoes in the market, spending a hundred euros on flowers because they’re “nice”. Harry is with him in the evenings, next to him at dinner, kissing him on the walk back to their house from their favourite restaurant, fucking him slowly and looking at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When they get home he sleeps over with Zayn most nights, greets Karen and Geoff like they’re his own parents in the morning and holds Zayn’s hand across the breakfast table. 

“You’re my best friend,” Zayn tells him one night in the dark, his voice catching in his throat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when you go away,” and Harry says, voice steadfast and certain, “I have faith in you. You’ll be fine.”

*

As it turns out, Harry isn’t back during the holidays all that often. His stepdad gets a new job which transfers him to Paris, which means that his family pack up and move away and Harry hasn’t got a home left to come back to any more. “You can come here,” Zayn whispers into the phone, feeling like his heart’s about to pop out of his chest. “You can always come here,” and Harry says, “I know,” hoarse and sad, and then he doesn’t. They’re not together, they’ve had their summer now, and Zayn’s met other people: a boy in his new English lit group, a girl in his additional Spanish for beginners class, but it’s not the same. They’re not Harry. They’re not the first person he met in this new insane world. He loves them though, as much as he can, and he doesn’t find himself feeling miserable and pathetic when Harry finally comes back to visit with a new boyfriend on his arm. He wants Harry to be happy. He wants himself to be happy too, and pining after someone who lives at the other end of the country isn’t going to do it. Harry was right, he realises the night before he goes away to university – English at Oxford, which made both Karen and his mother cry with pride – Zayn will be fine.

*

Oxford is intense but Zayn’s not afraid of a bit of hard work. He makes friends and fakes the traditions until he understands them and upholds them himself. He knows how to fit in with the rich now, and he knows he doesn’t look like he's as broke as he sometimes feels: Geoff and Karen made certain of that when they bought him a Macbook and some beautiful suits to wear under his robes for formal dinners and started transferring ‘living expenses’ into his account every month. He doesn’t really know how he can ever repay them but he doesn’t think he could turn it down either. He loves them too much for the kindness they’ve shown him and the delicate, thoughtful way they’ve done it. He doesn’t know if he would have considered any of this to be within his grasp before and he realises that’s what money’s for, really: that sense of innate confidence, that safety net that means he can take risks and study something he loves instead of something with a defined career path. He splits the holidays between Bradford and Geoff and Karen’s, takes Sasha out for walks and shuts himself away in his tiny old room to write essays before he gets back to London and Louis insists on taking him and Niall and Liam to whatever new club he’s found. Liam and Louis move in together after they graduate and it’s nice to see them, the way they’ve grown up together, the way they’ve grown into each other. Zayn doesn’t think he’ll ever have anyone who understands him the way that Louis understands Liam. Sometimes he thinks of Harry, but it’s not in a particularly sad way any more: they had something good and beautiful and he’s glad it happened, and he wouldn’t change it for the world. 

*

Here’s what Zayn doesn’t know: when the boys are twenty-eight, Geoff and Karen will have a New Year’s Eve party, and Harry will come. Zayn’s eyes will meet Harry’s across the room and his heart will do something strange inside his chest and for a moment Harry will be the only person in the room. They’ll cut towards each other and Harry will smile at Zayn, easy and sweet, like he knows him better than anyone else in the world. “The moment I saw you,” Harry says, “I realised how much I missed you.” His hands are on Zayn’s waist and Zayn’s leaning into him, he can feel it, like he’s a flower and Harry’s the sun. They’ll end up together at midnight as the clock chimes, alone together in Zayn’s old bedroom right at the top of Karen and Geoff’s house, watching fireworks breathe life into the dark sky, and Zayn will pull Harry’s head down and kiss him for the first time in almost ten years.

That’ll happen. There’ll be time. For now, Zayn’s got people to fall in and out of love with, graduation ceremonies to attend with two sets of parents cheering for him, nieces to spoil, weddings to attend, jobs and promotions to get, and his sisters by blood and his brother by choice to love. He’s got time to figure out that a debt only exists if both parties acknowledge it and that Karen and Geoff gave to him out of nothing more than goodness, and that the only thing they want from him is a life well lived. He’s got himself to find, and Harry waiting at the end of the journey, patient and kind-eyed and ready to love. “I’m whoever you want me to be,” Zayn told him once, and ten years later Harry will hold him in a quiet dark bedroom at the dawning of a new year and murmur into his ear, heartfelt, “All I want is you.”

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [flomps](http://flomps.tumblr.com) and my twitter is [foracorkscrew](https://twitter.com/foracorkscrew) \- come and say hi!


End file.
